. Spinning .

I’m getting quite a late start this morning in my writing, and all because an idea that won’t go away is bogging and blocking (blogging?) my thoughts, excluding all else from getting through. With a more focused day at hand; that is, limited to under five areas of concentration, I should be able to get through and beyond it to move on through the morning. It started out as a simple piece on friendship, but has spread in directions that encompass a bit more introspective dealings. Usually the best way to handle this sort of predicament is to get the simpler things done first and out of the way, and this is my plan. I’ve left it for now, will go do errands, finalize a draft for an oral Spanish presentation (thank God this is a great class with an excellent professor and terrific classmates; my mastery of the language plus my hesitancy at public speaking should prove a hilarious and embarrassing display), and retire to the shop to continue working with my hands while the thought is allowed to coagulate into a writeable mass.

How rude of me to have started the day off complaining about our bad writing habits! And me, of all people! Why just look at my name: Spinning… tales, my wheels, out of control. How much more of a cliché can you be? But then, my excuse is that in the excitement of the moment I had to fill in that big blank box that wanted me to come up instantly with a NAME: ____________.

Perhaps I should practice what I preach and change Spinning to something more appropriate and creative. I rather like Ben’s suggestion commented below of “Prolific Little Monkey.”

Whoever first described it as “a blanket of snow” really nailed it. Hearing the words for the first time, one must admire the conception, the thought process, the beauty of finding just the right words. Sometimes it seems that once so perfect a descriptive phrase is coined, it’s impossible to find better words, to even come up with something different.

For a writer, it presents an even more real problem. The phrase becomes stuck in one’s mind and we cannot move beyond it. Clichés are hard to keep out of our writing, but their use is one of the new writer’s biggest downfalls. We must remember that just as it is familiar and natural to us to use it, it is just as familiar to editors and readers, and the words–beautiful as they be–are mentally discarded in the same second they are recognized. Used a few too many clichés, and the entire piece becomes a bore, second-hand, and rejected.

When I find myself using an overused phrase in my writing, I will type it in so that the flow of words is not brought to an abrupt halt, but using bold typeface so that it is easily spotted when I go back and edit. Unless to achieve an effect, for example, to emphasize a point, or in dialogue to expose a dull character, clichés should not be used lest they expose instead a dull writer.

Garmhos is well underway as a weblog for writers of all genres and mediums, and though it is tied in with a local group, all are welcome as the internet provides the silky strands of the web to reach and gather at the spider’s table. Visit, comment, and enjoy as it grows to bind the branches of thoughts together.

So now the Word program is left open and staring back at me when I come flying into the room and sit down at the keyboard. Writers can control words—through superhuman effort, they can learn this much—but there is little control over when the words are delivered from the sky and water and the earth to the brain, are synapsed to their proper lobe and find their way to paper or screen. Of this I am certain, and so must be prepared.

I want a laptop for Christmas.